I'm sure you already know that Twisted Insurrection is hard. It's not for the casual players, even if played on easy. I don't even want to know how hard it would be on hard... I'm now at the 11th GDI Mission "Insurrection" (the Globotech one). Every bigger attack of the enemy is much work to counter, even with many defense towers. I'm not sure that this is the wanted effect on a difficulty called "easy".

The mod itself is really nice. Two whole new campaigns, many bonus missions, so many new units, buildings, ... The atmosphere of the game (with all the tiberium) can even take it on with original Firestorm missions.

But I have one thing which I don't like with the mod... It's hard to explain... I think the units feel worthless. Even elite units are not really special. They don't feel like they do really much more than standard units, and they don't even heal themself, at least not every one. In Tiberium Wars, a single fully promoted unit was something to be proud of. They are easily worth three normal units if properly taken care of. Not to speak of Red Alert 2 - a single fully promoted unit could kill a whole enemy base.
A single unit is nothing to be proud of in Twisted Insurrection, but even whole armies just melt. "Hey, you finally have harvested enough tiberium to create an army of 10 kazuar and 10 goliath? That's nice! ... aaaaand they're gone." - you understand what I mean?
In the original Tiberian Sun, this kind of army (10 wolverine and 10 titan) would be enough to destroy most smaller bases, but in Twisted Insurrection you have to be lucky to kill the defense of a base with that. Okay, I'm with no means a great player. With better tactical knowledge that would look much better, but this fast pace is nothing for me.
Base defenses weren't really good in Tiberian Sun, and they still are not in Twisted Insurrection. You need three of every kind to hold off attacks, which takes time and space to build, place and repair. It's mostly a problem because I need my time to react to things, which is very bad in a fast RTS. ^^
Also happens sometimes that I do my things somewhere else on the map, go back and half my base is gone. Um, yeah. Maybe I'm really slow to react, but that stuff happens frighteningly fast. o_O

Does anyone else also think like that? Anyone maybe a hint for me what I could do better? Maybe I should change the health of every unit in the rules.ini to raise it a bit. If every unit can take more damage, nothing should change on the balancing, but I have more time to react and units don't feel so squishy. ^^QUICK_EDIT

In TS and also RA2, the AI build almost no units at all. A mixed group of 20 units was like a huge army compared to the 2-5 units the AI was sending every 30 minutes.

In these it was really that you had all the time in the world to very slowly build up a base and all the units you want with a single refinery.
If your base was big enough you could go eating for an hour and let the game running without having to fear anything from the AI.

TI on the other hand is much faster paced and you actually have to work to a point where you can outproduce the opponent. And such outproducing can only be done with many refineries (on multiple tib fields) and 3 or more factories.
Thus slow paced turtle base players have a hard time to continue their play style.

Novastar wrote:

Maybe I should change the health of every unit in the rules.ini to raise it a bit.

If you really wanna do that, use the Armor= key instead in the sections
[Easy], [Normal], [Difficult].
This way you can raise the hitpoints of every object by a certain percentage with a single key and don't have to edit hundreds of objects.

Note: you can't play online then anymore and the client will notify you that you've changed the files, where you have to skip the message to repair the files._________________SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings

Even just building a 2nd Refinery right after your War Factory helps a lot. I think that is basically the first thing you have to learn in Twisted Insurrection - to just build a 2nd refinery.

With one Refinery it's impossible, but if you have two and keep building units it makes more sense.

However, for me, the biggest problem is actually getting there. I basically always die to the attacks the Medium or Hard AI sends out very early, sometimes even before I have my War Factory up and running. If I don't, it is an autowin for me, though - as long as I make sure I don't run out of funds to keep spamming units.

However, the issue I have with this is that resources sometimes feel infinite - you can just spam huge armies and often enough that's what I do.
I would like a bunch of maps that do not have seemingly unlimited resources._________________Tales of WarQUICK_EDIT

This I absolutely agree with and suggested ways to try improve it before. I think a global increase in unit strength would do wonders for the feel of it, so units don't die in seconds to basic infantry and the balance is tipped slightly more in favour of preserving units over just churning them out. At the moment everything dies so quickly nothing has much meaning, you build stuff and send it to it's death without thinking a whole lot while slower combat brought on by higher healthed units (probably not buildings IMO) would make you focus on the actual combat side of the game rather than building and spamming._________________

I have the impression that the fast paced style of TI comes from the rather fast speed of units or comparable small maps. Not so much of the lower hitpoints.

Compared to DTA, which i would call slow/well paced, it feels like units in TI can cross maps in half the time as in DTA.
Thus it seems like there is a lot less time to react and even a retreating unit is caught in no time by the other sides fast attacking units.

Most TI games i've played were already over when i send 8 viper drones /kazuars to rush kill the enemy ref, warfactory and conyard in one q-move attack. Those are so fast, that even a fast enemy defending team had no chance to kill them. A player has a very hard time to click precisely on one fast moving unit to attack/kill it.
Though in this regard, giving almost every unit a turret was quite a bad move as well imo, as this raises the game speed too.
5 or 6 of these early turreted "scouts" can kill a critical building (ref, warfactory) in a singly passing by q-move attack.

Personally i have to say that TI is also a bit too fast paced for my liking and i wouldn't mind if the mod changes to a more slow paced, more strategic game.
Unit speeds reduced in general to about 90 or 80%
Firepower reduced in general to about 70 or even 50%

We could do some staff tests by using the global difficulty keys
Groundspeed=1.0
Airspeed=1.0
Armor=1.0
Firepower=1.0
etc

Since these are only a few keys that need to be changed, there could be even a Client game option done in future
[ ] Slow paced game style
which then enables different values for a match._________________SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings

TI is indeed quite fast, and many maps have an almost infinite amount of resources. It often becomes a contest of who has the best long-term economy (most refineries and harvesters), and unit counts tend to get high, especially when playing against the somewhat campy AI. Because the AI builds a lot of units very fast and it also builds lots of defenses, you usually need a large bunch of units so you even have a chance at taking out an AI. The same often applies to missions that have lots of pre-placed defenses - especially the GDI vs GT missions IIRC.

Against human players TI is more strategic, especially early on you need to think what to spend your money and build time on. If a game gets too long though, it tends to get spammy just like games against the AI.

I personally enjoy TI's fast pace and wouldn't like to see it changed. While I love DTA's slower pace as well, I like how the mods are different in that while in DTA you have fewer units and need to carefully micromanage your units in battles, TI is more about speed. The micromanagement is there too, but the game speed is so fast that it's usually just impossible to 'optimally' manage your units in combat, and because of the larger amount of resources, individual units have less significance. DTA PvP basically gives me challenging and mentally heavy strategic games, while TI PvP gets me an enjoyable adrenaline rush with building stuff, watching the opponents and managing my units as fast as I can. The mods are different and I enjoy both.

One thing to keep in mind is that in case TI is too fast for you, you can lower the game speed. Especially in singleplayer (in multiplayer people might be reluctant to play at a slower speed).

What I would give a try is rebalancing the economy of some maps so that they don't have practically endless resources lategame. More tactical expansion, and potentially fewer units lategame => individual units could have more significance. I'd also fix the AI so it doesn't have infinite money, and make some of the missions less spammy by lowering the number of pre-placed enemy defenses._________________QUICK_EDIT

I wouldn't say (at least my suggestions for change) are about slowing the game down, but that depends what you think of as speed in an RTS. I think SC2 is an incredibly fast RTS because you always have more to do than is humanly possible yet units arent particularly fast or too fragile. It's more about where you want players to spend their time.

Right now the balance is on building, and clicking the sidebar IMO, making sure to always be producing shit and throwing it in the general direction of your enemy. I think reducing unit construction speed (although I don't think TS has ways of reducing only specific queue speeds, which is a shame) but increasing their strength would help focus it more on unit control rather than production. Preserving units should be both possible and rewarded, which would also nicely complement an economy nerf. Controlling units in fights should actually have importance IMO. Doing damage to your opponant isnt just about knocking out buildings or taking them out altogether, but whittling down their army which they cannot afford replace easily. Infantry are still the throwaway vulnerable meatshields but tanks should have weight and to go with their cost._________________

i always hated how C&C used infantry as meat shields, surely its the otherway round IRL. spent hours brainstorming ideas how to shift infantry usage to more of a similarity with irl.

TI is indeed pretty hard, but compared to the "good ol" days of my rts gaming .im pretty bad at playing C&C these days i use C&C to make a shiny pretty looking base ,and to pine over past glories,

i find with TI the single player is way beyond my skills,(going through the ini and reducing some units speeds and firing rates help alittle for us players with the reaction speeds of an OAP)) but i can handle skirmishes most of the time(get that air defense up quicktime being the general rule).

i still dont think TI is too hard that it needs to be changed, but an omen that i need to improve.QUICK_EDIT

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